Televisions have tuners for receiving broadcast television from cable or radio frequency inputs. In the early days, only a few stations broadcast over radio waves and there was no cable or satellite service. In those days, analog transmission was used to distribute programming of only a few stations over the Very High Frequency bands (VHF). Later, additional stations were added in the Ultra High Frequency (UHF) bands. In any given area, three to maybe 30 stations were available. In the early days, paper guides were the primary mechanism used for a viewer to determine what program was to be shown on what channel. For example, the magazine TV Guide presented a listing of what programs were on what stations in a time-sorted list (e.g., one page has listings for what programs were on each station at 7:00 PM). This was fine for a few stations such as channel 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11 and 13 in the New York City suburban area in 1960, but soon became difficult to produce and cumbersome to use when the number of stations increased. It soon became difficult to manage, to produce and difficult for the viewer to find programs. Additionally, the printing cycle of such guides was often weekly and if a change to programming occurred after a cutoff point, the change was not reflected in the guide, making the guide inaccurate at times.
In parallel with analog broadcast television, many viewers made the switch to cable television that offered hundreds of channels, including some of the broadcast channels. Cable added many new channels, including premium channels that require a subscription fee and pay-per-view programs in which the viewer pays a fee to watch, for example, a sporting event or movie. Early cable systems published their own weekly or monthly guide, but this was difficult to use due to the large number of stations and the limited print space. In addition, many cable systems added a dedicated station having a rolling program guide. This was a very early electronic program guide (EPG) and listed the programs for each station/channel that are currently being shown or will be shown within the next two hours or so. Because most cable systems had 50-150 stations/channels, the guide scrolled though the channels sequentially. If you wanted to know what was to be shown on Channel 10 and the display currently shows channel 20, you would have to wait for all of the channels between 20 and the last channel, then channel 1 and channel 9 to scroll by before channel 10 was displayed. Then you had a short time to focus in on channel 10 and read what was to be shown. This soon became useless as the number of channels kept increasing.
Cable soon found a competitor. Satellite television providers transmitted over 100 channels to one or more geo-stationary satellites and each satellite retransmitted the channels back towards earth for reception on large satellite antennas, often six to 9 feet wide. Many subscribers were attracted to satellite television because of the breadth and type of content available, but many were alienated to satellite television because of the unsightly antenna in their back yard. Apartment dwellers, condominium owners and town home owners did not have a place for such antenna. Eventually, two major satellite television providers launched similar satellite services that required much smaller dish antenna, approximately one foot in diameter, appealing to a much greater audience. Each provider offered over 100 digital television stations, including pap-per-view programs and premium (subscription) stations.
Since there was a limited bandwidth available for each satellite, the number of stations for each satellite was limited, preventing the transmission of local stations. A large number of subscribers received the same stations, so many still relied on terrestrial broadcasts for local news, traffic and weather. For example, the entire east coast of the United States received the same stations, leading to the birth of news and weather networks such as CNN and TWC. Therefore, there were very few local stations unless, for example, you lived in New York City.
The satellite broadcast received by the antenna was decoded by a set-top box and down-converted to an unused broadcast station to feed an existing television (early televisions did not have external inputs such as Composite, S-Video, HDMI, etc). There needed to be a way to select one of the stations out of the many since the television was fixed to one station, usually channel 2 or channel 3, rendering the television tuner somewhat useless in selecting the myriad of stations that were available. Selecting of the stations was accomplished though a remote control that interfaced to the set-top box, having direct channel addressing (e.g. enter 1-0-1 to change to channel 101) or up/down addressing (e.g. press the up arrow to get to the next station). Early providers offered weekly paper program guides. With over 100 stations, these guides often proved difficult to use. As an improvement, satellite providers (and third-party providers) started offering what became known as an electronic program guide. In this, the providers downloaded an electronic program guide to the user's set-top box, either through the satellite system or over phone lines, then presented the guide in a menu on the user's television. The user had the ability to move ahead or back in time (right arrow/left arrow) and up and down in the station list (up arrow/down arrow), seeing what programs are on what stations at what time. Features such as page up/down and direct station addressing were also provided.
Broadcast television later migrated to a digital spectrum, greatly increasing the number of stations and sub-stations (e.g. NBC, NBC1, NBC2, etc). There are often many different channels or stations of programs or content from which a viewer of the television is able to select. For example, some cable systems offer hundreds of cable channels containing content such as network television programming (ABC, NBC, CBS, etc), music channels, movie channels (HBO, SHO, MAX), and so fourth.
Electronic program guides became available for cable television, satellite television and digital broadcast television. The electronic program guides provide information regarding the programs available from the content sources such as the content broadcast over the air waves, through satellites, or through cables (copper or fiber optic) and all let the viewer select the content that they wish to view.
Lately, many other sources of content (audio, video, still pictures, etc) have been connected to the television in many different ways. Some sources of content are connected or interfaced directly to the television such as insertion of a disk containing pictures, video, music, etc. or connecting a disk (e.g. USB jump drive) containing pictures, video, music, etc. Some sources of content are connected to the television through a network such as content stored on network attached storage (NAS) or content on a computer system connected to the television through a local area network. Similarly, content is also provided by servers remotely connected to the television through, for example, the Internet. An example of content servers is a movie rental companies such as Netflix. Previously, access to content from these types of media, drives and servers required an external device (e.g. set-top box, disk player) and a separate user interface. Now, many television devices are connected to networks, having access to content stored locally on the network and remotely on, for example, the Internet. Additionally, many television devices provide direct connection of media through ports such as Universal Serial Bus (USB) ports and the like. Accessing content on the network and on connected devices often requires that the viewer perform different actions using different menu systems and/or different controls.
What is needed is a system provides listing, manipulation and access to devices through the electronic program guide interface.